I like it, but as a strategy it sounds very delicate and is highly reliant on the highest levels of the organisation being thoughtful. Having discovered and fallen in love with Robert Kegan’s adult development model recently, I am now much more keenly aware of just how much large groups of people struggle with separating ideas from the people who advocate for them. IMO it'd only take one or two people in key positions to bring down institutionalised devils advocacy. And a lot of people - potentially in leadership positions - legitimately won't understand how having a person advocate for non-consensus ideas helps because they don't judge correctness by argument but by the number and status of the people advocating it.
The technique in the article would protect against groupthink, but I suspect the people most likely to be taken in by groupthink won't understand it and will keep making decisions based on which position has the most advocates. The article notes that advocatus diaboli of the Catholics was more akin to a muckraker looking for unknown facts than operating in a genuine position of advocacy or steelmanned argument - that'd be a more stable role in the long term but that isn't a defence against groupthink. Groupthink is fact-resistant.
The technique in the article would protect against groupthink, but I suspect the people most likely to be taken in by groupthink won't understand it and will keep making decisions based on which position has the most advocates. The article notes that advocatus diaboli of the Catholics was more akin to a muckraker looking for unknown facts than operating in a genuine position of advocacy or steelmanned argument - that'd be a more stable role in the long term but that isn't a defence against groupthink. Groupthink is fact-resistant.